Read Jessica’s response to the Manchester attack in the Boston Globe: Attacks on Soft Targets Likely to Get Worse

“Terror can make us lash out at the wrong enemy, for the wrong reasons, or both, as was the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We want to wage war, not just on terrorism, but also on terror, to banish the feeling of being unjustly attacked or unable to protect the blameless. This is especially true in regard to attacks on young people, as happened Monday night in Manchester. 

We need to be conscious, at all times, of our natural tendency to lash out in response to moral evil in ways that sometimes worsen the threat…”

Read Sara Rimer’s profile of Jessica for BU Today: Why Terrorists Kill

“In the 1997 film The Peacemaker, Nicole Kidman plays a government scientist based on Stern’s role at the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration, when she was director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs and head of a nuclear weapons smuggling response unit. Like her movie counterpart, who chases down a nuclear weapons–stealing Bosnian terrorist with a US military intelligence officer played by George Clooney, she is brainy, fluent in Russian, hyperfocused, and pretty. Unlike Kidman’s humorless know-it-all bureaucrat, Stern is warm, self-deprecating, and quick to laugh, at herself as often as not. Her students say she’s a rock star—and a regular person. She calls herself a nerd…”